Short answer: marketplace fees do not have a goods HSN code at all. Commission, closing fees, storage, ad fees and shipping charged by a platform are a service, so they sit in Chapter 99 of the tariff and carry a six-digit SAC — most often heading 9985 (support services), with 998599 "other support services n.e.c." being the line you will see on marketplace fee invoices. Some platforms instead classify commission under the trade-services family, such as 996111 (services provided for a fee or commission or on contract basis on wholesale trade). Either way the rate is 18% GST. And here is the part that should end the search: you don’t choose this code — the platform does, because the platform is the supplier of that service and issues the tax invoice. Your job is to read it off the PDF, not guess it.
Marketplace fees HSN code — the actual numbers
Every figure below traces to a notification, a return format, or a platform’s own published fee page. The scope column tells you which one — read it before you repeat any of these numbers to your accountant, because two of them changed within the last two years.
| Item | Value | Scope / source |
| Classification of marketplace fees | Chapter 99 SAC — heading 9985 (support services), commonly 998599; some platforms use 996111 / 996211 | Scheme of classification of services under GST |
| GST on platform fees | 18% | Amazon.in’s own fee page states all listed fee types are shown excluding GST and that 18% GST is applied to all of them (as of 2026) |
| TCS by the e-commerce operator | 0.5% total — 0.25% CGST + 0.25% SGST intra-state, 0.5% IGST inter-state | Notification 15/2024-Central Tax, dated and effective 10 July 2024, following the 53rd GST Council meeting |
| TDS under section 194-O | 0.1% of gross sales, from 1 October 2024; 5% if PAN is not furnished | Income-tax Act; ₹5 lakh annual exemption for an individual or HUF who furnishes PAN/Aadhaar |
| HSN digits you must report | 4 digits if aggregate annual turnover is up to ₹5 crore; 6 digits above ₹5 crore | GSTR-1 Table 12, Phase 3 rules in force from the May 2025 return period |
One row in that table is where most pages on this query are still wrong: TCS. Articles published in 2026 continue to print 1% (0.5% CGST + 0.5% SGST). That was the pre-July-2024 rate. Notification 15/2024 halved it to 0.5% with effect from 10 July 2024. The damage is quiet rather than dramatic. On ₹40 lakh of quarterly GMV, a sheet still assuming 1% expects ₹40,000 of TCS credit and receives ₹20,000. Every settlement then reads ₹20,000 short, and you lose an afternoon writing to seller support about a gap that exists only inside your own formula.
What drives the number up or down
The SAC and the 18% are fixed. What moves is the base the 18% is applied to — and that base is where the margin actually goes.
- Category and price band. Referral fees are set per category and often per price band. On Amazon.in as of 2026, mobile phones carry a flat 5% referral fee, while fashion jewellery is 0% at or below ₹1,000 and 22.5% above ₹1,000. Price a pendant at ₹1,200 and the referral fee is ₹270 before GST. Price the same pendant at ₹999 and it is zero. That is not a rounding detail; it is the whole margin on a low-ticket SKU.
- Announced fee changes. Amazon India announced that from 16 March 2026 zero referral fees extend to over 12.5 crore products priced under ₹1,000 across 1,800+ categories, with Easy Ship fees cut by more than 20% for products under ₹300. Its own worked examples include a ₹999 fashion jewellery item saving ₹224 per unit. If you last modelled your margins before that date, your model is describing a fee schedule that no longer exists.
- Fulfilment mode. Self-ship, platform-assisted ship and full fulfilment attach different stacks of lines to the identical order — the same SKU can settle with three fee lines under one mode and seven under another, once weight handling, pick-and-pack and storage enter the picture. All of them carry the same 18%, which is why switching fulfilment shows up in your credit ledger as well as your cost sheet.
- Your turnover. Crossing ₹5 crore aggregate annual turnover doesn’t change a rupee of your fees. It changes your reporting granularity in GSTR-1 Table 12 from 4-digit to 6-digit codes, which is a filing problem, not a pricing one — and it arrives in the middle of a financial year, not neatly on 1 April.
The mistake that keeps recurring — and how to avoid it
The single most common error behind the search "marketplace fees HSN code" is a misunderstanding of why you’d need the code at all. Sellers assume the fee’s SAC has to be reported somewhere in their outward return, and then either invent a code or reuse the HSN of the product they sold. I have seen a commission line filed under 6109 — the HSN for T-shirts — for no better reason than that 6109 was the code already sitting in the seller’s clipboard that month.
Table 12 of GSTR-1 is an HSN-wise summary of outward supplies only. A marketplace fee is an inward supply to you. It never belongs in Table 12. What you actually do with it is claim input tax credit for that 18% in GSTR-3B, against the platform’s invoice as reflected in your GSTR-2B. There is no HSN or SAC field for it there. None. If you are hunting for the box, the box does not exist.
The one place an inward code can surface is Table 18 of the annual return GSTR-9 — the HSN-wise summary of inward supplies — and that table has remained optional, while Table 17 (outward) has been mandatory from FY 2021-22 onwards subject to the turnover conditions above. So the diagnostic is simple: if you find yourself typing a code for a fee you paid, stop and check which table you’re standing in.
Since Phase 3 took effect from the May 2025 period, Table 12 is split into B2B and B2C tabs and codes must be picked from a dropdown rather than typed. That kills invented codes at the point of entry. It does nothing about a perfectly valid code sitting in the wrong table, which is the error that actually costs people notices.
Hidden costs most people miss
- The 18% is real cash out first. It is creditable, not free. On ₹2 lakh of platform fees in a month, ₹36,000 leaves on the settlement date and comes back only against output liability. If that liability is small — as it is for most low-margin or heavily discounted catalogues — the credit sits in the ledger while the working capital is already gone.
- TCS is your money parked elsewhere. The 0.5% the platform collects doesn’t reach you until you accept it in the TDS/TCS Credit Received tab on the GST portal, after which it lands in your electronic cash ledger. Sellers who have never opened that tab are usually surprised by the balance waiting in it — money they funded quarters ago.
- Section 194-O is separate from GST. That 0.1% is income tax deducted on your gross sales, not on the fee. It appears in Form 26AS and is adjusted at income-tax return time. Reconciling it against your GST workings will only produce a mismatch, because the two are measuring different things.
- Registration. Notification 34/2023-Central Tax, dated 31 July 2023 and effective 1 October 2023, waived mandatory GST registration for goods suppliers selling through an e-commerce operator below ₹40 lakh (₹20 lakh in special category states) — but only if they supply through an ECO in one state or union territory, hold a PAN, and enrol on the common portal. Add a second state and the exemption is gone.
How to bring the cost down
Nothing here is a tax trick. It is pricing and hygiene.
- Price against the band, not against the round number. If a category is 0% at or below ₹1,000 and materially higher above it, a ₹1,049 listing can net less than a ₹999 one. Pull your category’s actual fee table before you set the price — not last year’s copy of it.
- Claim every rupee of the 18%. Reconcile the platform’s fee invoices to GSTR-2B every month, once the statement for the period is available (generated around the 14th of the following month), rather than saving it all for the annual return. An invoice that never appeared in 2B is credit you have paid for and cannot take — and finding that out eleven months late gives you nothing to do about it.
- Split the fee stack in your P&L. Referral, closing, weight handling, storage and ads behave nothing alike: one tracks price, one tracks parcel size, one tracks how long the stock sat. A single "marketplace fees" line hides which of them is eating the category, so you end up cutting price when the real problem was 90-day-old inventory.
- Re-check fee tables after any announced change. Fee schedules move on the platform’s calendar. Your spreadsheet does not move itself.
Summary — a checklist you can run today
- Open one recent platform fee invoice and write down the exact SAC printed on it. That is your answer — not a code from a blog, including this one.
- Confirm the invoice shows 18% GST on the fee, and that it appears in your GSTR-2B for that period.
- Search your GSTR-1 Table 12 entries for any code you recognise as a fee. If one is there, remove it — Table 12 is outward supplies only.
- Check your digit count: 4-digit if aggregate annual turnover is up to ₹5 crore, 6-digit above it.
- Verify your settlement sheet computes TCS at 0.5%, not the old 1%.
- Log into the GST portal and accept anything sitting in the TDS/TCS Credit Received tab.
- Re-price any SKU sitting just above a category’s price threshold and see what it nets.
Rates, thresholds and fee tables in this piece are stated as of 2026 and are specific to India’s GST regime and the platforms named. Confirm the current position against CBIC notifications and your platform’s own fee schedule before you file, and take classification questions on your specific catalogue to a qualified tax professional — this is operational guidance, not tax advice.